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A Fifth Dimension:Glossary
This page provides a convenient reference of common terms used in A Fifth Dimension. If you notice a word that should be on the list but is not, please add it below. A ; Admin : One of the administrators of A Fifth Dimension. This type of user is responsible for cleanup and other "housekeeping" chores on the wiki. Also known as a sysop. ; AFD : A F'ifth '''D'imension. Abbreviation for the wiki. This is '''not to be confused with Wikipedia's abbreviation of AFD (Articles for deletion), which shouldn't be a problem; we use "CFD" or "Candidates for deletion" here. ; Alternate timeline : What is referred to as an alternate timeline is a timeline in which an event that has happened in the Twilight Zone disagrees with the otherwise compatible chronological order of events in the fictional universe. Most events do not occur in this timeline—thus alternate, but instead within the Real timeline. See also Time in the Twilight Zone. ; Anchor : An term for code that lets you link to a specific point in a page—like sections, using the "#" character. See also: the template. ; Apprentice narrator or apprentice : Term used in this wiki for regular contributors that have registered their usernames. Similar to contributors on , archivists on MemoryAlpha:Main Page, The Star Trek Wiki, or TARDIS crew members on TARDIS Index File, The Doctor Who Wiki. ; Article : An article is an encyclopedia entry. All articles are pages, but not all pages are articles. See What is an article?. ; Autoconfirm : A newly registered user is still subject to some of the same restrictions as anonymous users. For example, the inability to move articles or edit semi-protected pages, although some restrictions, such as the restriction on anonymous users creating pages, are lifted. When a user is autoconfirmed, these restrictions end. B ; Blanking : The removal of all content from an article. New users often do this accidentally. On the other hand, if blanking an article is done in bad faith, it is vandalism. This differs from deletion, as the article link remains valid. As such, deletion—not blanking—is the preferred action for removing content from this wiki. ; Block : Action by an admin, removing the ability to edit a wiki from a user (registered or not). This is usually done against addresses that have committed vandalism or against users who have been banned. ; Boilerplate text : A standard message which can be added to an article using a . For example, is expanded to the following: :This article is a stub. You can help A Fifth Dimension by expanding it. ; Blue link or bluelink : A wikilink to an article that already exists shows up blue (or purple if it has been recently visited by that user). ; Bot : Short for robot; a program that applies changes on its own. ; Broken link : A wiki link (created like this) for which the corresponding article has not yet been created. These links appear in red text. See also: Redlink ; Broken redirect : A page redirecting users to another page that does not yet exist or has since been deleted. ; Bureaucrat : A type of administrator who has the ability to make other users into administrators. See also: Crat C ; Category or cat : A category is a collection of pages automatically formed by the Wikipedia servers by analyzing category tags in articles. Category tags are in the form . The part after the colon (":") is the name of the Category. Adding a category tag causes a link to the category and any super-categories to go to the bottom of the page. As stated, it also results in the page being added to the category listing. A list of basic categories to browse through can be found at . ; CCC : "Clear, complete and concise." The "Three C's" provide the balance that we hope all articles in the wiki will achieve. Avoiding this goal can lead to Cruft. ; CFD : Shorthand for "candidates for deletion". Used instead of Wikipedia's choice of AFD, for obvious reasons. ; Copyvio : Shorthand for copyright violation. See A Fifth Dimension:Copyright violations. ; Chatty : A term used for articles which seem to present their content in the manner of a casual conversation with the reader. Chatty articles may need cleanup. Only Rod Serling could get away with it. ; Checkuser : An access level with which a user can see the IP addresses of logged-in users, usually to determine if someone is using sockpuppets to violate policy. ; Cleanup : The process of repairing articles that contain errors of grammar, are poorly formatted, or contain irrelevant material. Cleanup generally requires only editing skills, as opposed to the specialized knowledge that is more often called for by pages needing attention. ; Contribs : Short for contributions. A user has made these edits. ; Convenience links : Links to unofficial copies of reliable sources (not to the original publisher) in addition to a formal citation of the reliable source. Has the advantage over books, paid websites, and websites that need registration of easy accessibility. Sometimes disputed because of violations of copyright, linking to partisan websites, possible distortions or those reliable sources, or because it may contain comments on the reputable sources that other editors do not like. See Wikipedia:convenience links ; Copyedit : A change to an article that only affects formatting, grammar, and other presentational aspects. See also and Wikipedia:How to copy-edit. ; Crat : See 'Bureaucrat.'' ; Cruft : A term used to describe an article or group of articles that are too focused on a specific topic, covering it in too much detail for a general encyclopedia. The term is often used as a suffix for terms such as Zonecruft (Twilight Zone-cruft). Cruft articles are often on topics such as minor characters from television series, or very specific lists of songs (such as "List of songs which includes the word 'death' in the lyrics"). Cruft is often deleted or merged into other articles by the Wikipedia community. Keep in mind, however, that this is an encyclopedia for The Twilight Zone so articles can be expected to go more in-depth than if they were included in a general encyclopedia like . ; Cut and paste move : Moving a page by taking the text of the page and pasting it into the edit window for the second page. Generally considered less advidable than the "move page" option because it causes the page and its edit history to be in different places. Cut and paste moves can be fixed by administrators. See also How to fix cut and paste moves. D ; Dab : Abbreviation of . ; Dablink or dab link : See 'Disambiguation link.'' ; Dabpage, dab page : See 'Disambiguation page.'' ; Deorphan or De-orphan : To make a page no longer an '''orphan. See also Orphan ; De-wikify or De-wikification : The process of removing wiki markup from a page. This can be done to remove self references or excessive common-noun wikification. See also: wikify. ; Dead-end : A page that contains no links to other pages. Opposite of 'Orphan.'' ; Deletionist : Someone who actively attempts to delete pages that others prefer to keep on a routine basis and tending to always vote to "Endorse" . Often used as a derogatory term. The term inclusionist is used for the opposite party, but is less common. See also m:deletionism, m:inclusionism, and Wikipedia:Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia. ; Diff : Short for '''difference. Used on and page histories to show the difference between two versions of an article. ; Disambiguation : The process of resolving the conflict that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same natural title. Abbreviated form: disambig or Dab. ; Disambiguation link or dab link : A link at the top of an article to one or more other articles that share the same Natural title, using a disambiguation link template. Abbreviated form: dab link. ; Disambiguation page or dab page : A page solely intended to link to different pages with similar titles and where the various meanings are defined. In cases when there is a prevailing meaning of the term, disambiguation pages are named " (disambiguation)". Abbreviated form: dab page. ; Double redirect : A redirect that leads to another redirect. These should be eliminated by linking directly to the target redirect. It may arise when articles are moved. ; Dupe : Short for a duplicate article. Often used when identifying a duplicate page that needs to be merged with another. ; DYK : An abbreviation for Template:Did You Know, used in a section of the Main Page. E ; EC : See 'Edit conflict.'' ; Edit conflict : Two or more editors attempting to save edits to the same page at the same time. This can be resolved by copying your additions, reloading the page and then adding your addition. Not to be confused with 'Edit war.'' ; Edit summary : The contents of the "Summary:" field below the edit box on the "Edit this page" page. See . ; Edit war : Two or more parties continually making their own preferred changes to a page, and undoing the changes they do not agree with. Generally, an edit war is the result of an argument on a talk page that could not be resolved. Similar to "flame war." See also Edit war. ; Editor : Anyone who writes or modifies articles in A Fifth Dimension. See also: 'apprentice narrator, ' '.'' ; Eponymous : An eponymous category is a category that has the same name as an article and vice versa. For example: The Twilight Zone and the eponymous Category:The Twilight Zone. ; External link : A link to a web page outside of the A Fifth Dimension wiki. ''Also known as '''weblink.'' F ; FA : Featured article, an article that has been selected as representing "the best" in A Fifth Dimension. Articles become featured articles when a FAC gets consensus for promotion. ; FAC : Featured article candidate, an article that has been proposed for consideration to be featured as one of "the best" in A Fifth Dimension. ; FIST : Wikipedia's Free Image Search Tool, which will look for free images for articles, either manually listed or by category. (See also: IFI). ; Flag :1. A wiki ' ', in general. :2. Specifically, a template that will place a notice on a page and assign an article to a specific category (most often a stub template) :3. Specifically, a banner template applied to a talk page. :4. Often a template applied to an article that indicates that is needs cleanup or that something about it is disputed. :5. Rarely a category. :6. Verb: To apply any such template to a page, or to add a category. ; Fork or Forking : A splitting of an article subject into separate articles, usually to accommodate different POVs and avoid accepting the consensus of the editors. Also called a POV fork and generally regarded as highly undesirable. G ; GFDL : GNU Free Documentation License. Most Wikia content—including A Fifth Dimension: The Twilight Zone Wiki—is released under this license. See also Wikia copyrights. ; GPL : GNU General Public License. The MediaWiki software, which runs A Fifth Dimension, is released under this license. H ; Hatnote : A short note placed at the top of an article before the primary topic. See also Wikipedia:Hatnote. ; History : All previous versions of an article, from its creation to its current state. Also known as the ' '. I ; IFI : tool for importing images made available for use, typically under copyleft agreements. (See also FIST). ; In-universe : In-universe (IU POV) articles are written with the point of view of a character inside the fictional universe. Most articles concerning story, characters, and other plot devices existing inside the fictional universe are written from this . See 'Real world' for the opposing viewpoint. ; Inclusionist : A user who is of the opinion that the wiki should contain as much information as possible, often regardless of presentation or notability. There are varying degrees of Inclusionism – radical Inclusionists vote "Oppose" on every CFD they come across, while more moderate ones merely express their desire for a wide variety of topics to be covered, even if they do not fit the standard criteria for inclusion in an encyclopedia, or if the articles in question have quality problems. ; Infobox : A consistently formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject. See Wikipedia:Infobox and Wikipedia:Infobox templates for a how-to guide. See also: 'Sidebar' and Category:Sidebar templates. ; Internal link : A link to a page inside A Fifth Dimension created by using the wiki markup of double square brackets ("" and ""). Also known as a wikilink. ; Interwiki : A link from A Fifth Dimension to another wiki, such as . See and A Fifth Dimension: List of interwiki prefixes. ; IP user or IP editor : A user (or editor) who has declined to partake in, been unaware of or merely forgotten the registration process and are thus only known by their IP address. K ; Key article : A category's eponymous article, or any other article which deals directly with the subject of a category. For example: The Twilight Zone in Category:The Twilight Zone. L ; Link farm : Link farms are articles or sections of articles consisting entirely of external or internal links. Some pages consisting of internal links are acceptable (such as disambiguation pages and list articles); others are likely to be candidates for deletion, as are any consisting entirely of external links. ; Link rot : Because websites change over time, many external links from this wiki to other sites cannot be guaranteed to remain active. When an article's links becomes outdated and no longer work, the article is said to have undergone link rot. See also: Template:deadlink. ; Listify : To delete a category and turn the contents into a list. This is shorthand for saying that "this group of articles would be better if presented as a list, rather than as a category." M ; m : On the page, m''' (lower case, bold) indicates a minor edit. ; Magic word, magicword, or magic-word : A symbol recognized by the MediaWiki software and which, when seen in the non-commented text of the page, triggers the software to do something other than display that symbol, or transclude a page with that name, but instead to use the symbol directly. ; Main Page : The page to which every user not specifying an article is redirected. The Main Page contains links to current events, presents certain articles (like a featured article and links to the wiki's newest articles), and serves as an entry point to browsing all articles by topic or other classification. Links to sister projects and other-language wikis are also a prominent feature on the Main Page. Due to its high exposure, all content on the Main Page is protected. ; Mainspace : The main article '''namespace (i.e. not a talk page, not a "User:" page, etc.) ; Meat puppet : An account created only for the illegitimate strengthening of another user's position in votes or discussions. Unlike a sock puppet, the account is used by another person. Meat puppets are treated exactly like sock puppets in most cases, making the distinction between them largely academic. ; MediaWiki : The wiki software that runs A Fifth Dimension. ; Merge : Taking the text of two pages, and combining it into a single page. ; Mergist : A user who adheres to the principle of Mergism, which is a compromise between the Inclusionist and Deletionist principles. A Mergist is of the opinion that while many topics merit inclusion, not every topic deserves its own article, and tries to combine these "side" topics into longer, less specific articles. ; Meta page : A non-article page that defines policy or other administrative details. Meta pages reside in the A Fifth Dimension: namespace. ; Move : Changing the name and location of an article because of a misspelling, violation of naming convention, misnomer, or inaccuracy. Involves either renaming the page or moving it and constructing a redirect to keep the original link intact. See also . N ; N : On the page, N''' (upper case, bold) indicates a new page or article. ; Namespace : A method of classifying pages. Articles reside in the Main namespace; other namespaces include Talk:, User:, Help:, Forum:, Image:, Category:, Template:, Special:, Portal:, MediaWiki: and A Fifth Dimension:. See . ; Natural title : This is a title that best fits a subject and is commonly used to refer to a topic—a natural choice. Sometimes, natural titles can be shared by different topics. When it comes to a wiki, this may require '''Disambiguation. ; NC or NCs : Found in edit summaries to indicate that a change has been made to make an item comply with A Fifth Dimension's standard naming conventions. See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions. ; Newbie test, noob test or newb test : An edit made by a newcomer, just to see if "Edit this page" really does what it sounds like. Newcomers should use A Fifth Dimension:Sandbox for this purpose. See also: Introduction. ; NN : Found on comments at Candidates for deletion, indicating that the article's subject is not Wikipedia:WP:notable enough to warrant its own article. ; Nom : Short for "nomination," it is often found on Candidates for deletion as part of the phrase Delete per nom, indicating a voter's assent to the main nomination for deletion. ; NOR : The policy that No Original Research is allowed in citing sources in articles. ; NPOV : Neutral point of view, or the agreement to report subjective topics in an objective, neutral, and substantiated manner, so as not to cause edit wars between opposing sides. See . ; Null edit : A null edit is made when an editor opens the edit window of a document then re-saves the page without having made any text changes. This is sometimes done as a lazy way to purge – to update the functioning of templates (which require articles containing them to be edited in order for any changes to take effect). The term also applies to making a very small, non-substantive change (e.g., removing an unneeded blank line or adding one) in order to get the article history to register a change, for the purpose of leaving an edit summary that responds to a previous one. O ; Original research : In Wikipedia—as well as this wiki, original research (sometimes abbreviated OR) is material added to articles that has not been published already by a reputable source. As an encyclopedia, this is not the appropriate place to publish original research, nor can it be used for substantiation of article content. ; Orphan : A page that has no other pages linking to it. You can view lists of and . Opposite of Dead-end. P ; Page : Any individual topic in A Fifth Dimension, regardless of namespace. Page content is defined as the text contained on a page, minus the auto-generated top, bottom and side bars. ; Pipe: The pipe character ("|") that is used in wiki markup to create tables and create pipe links. ; Piped link : A piped link uses the pipe character ("|") to allow a link to show up differently than the page it is named after, e.g., Serling displays: Serling. ; Peer Review : A request to have fellow editors review and help improve an article. Flagging pages with the Template:Attention may help in offering up your work for review. See Wikipedia:Peer Review. ; Per or per nom : A comment on a page such as A Fifth Dimension:Candidates for deletion may be accompanied by the note "per nom", which means "for the reasons given by the nominator". See also: Wikipedia:Per. ; Personal attack : A comment that is not directed at content, but rather insults, demeans or threatens another editor (or a group of editors) personally, with obvious malice. To maintain a friendly and productive atmosphere, personal attacks are forbidden and may be grounds for banning in serious and/or repeated cases. See also: Wikipedia:No personal attacks, Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks. ; Point of view (POV) : The perspective from which an article is written. In A Fifth Dimension, most articles are written from the point of view of a character inside the Twilight Zone universe, or "in-universe." See A Fifth Dimension:Point of view. ; Protected page : A page that is unable to be edited by ordinary users, either for security or in the event of conflict over article content. Admins and developers can edit protected pages. See A Fifth Dimension:Protection policy. ; Public Domain : Material not presently under copyright and thus available for use without permission. Abbreviated as "PD." See also: Public domain. R ; RA : A Fifth Dimension:Requested articles, a place to ask people to create articles that should exist but do not. ; Random page : The link is on the left of each page for most skins. It will take you to an article that is chosen by a computer algorithm without any deliberate pattern or meaning to the choice. ; RC : An abbreviation for . See 'Recent changes.'' ; Real timeline : What is referred to as the "real" timeline is the chronological order of events that have occurred in the fictional universe of The Twilight Zone. It is referred to as the "real" timeline—often with quotation marks— because it is not our (real) timeline, but it is real to the characters within the Twilight Zone universe. Not all events occur in this timeline, some occur in an '''alternate timeline. See also Time in the Twilight Zone. ; Recent changes : A dynamically generated page (found at ) that lists all edits in descending chronological order. Sometimes abbreviated as RC. Recent changes are checked regularly by editors doing RC patrol, which means checking all suspicious edits to catch vandalism as early as possible. ; Redirect or redir : A page that automatically redirects the browser to another page, for convention and naming reasons among others. Also known as a redir. See . ; Red link : See Broken link. ; Render : In the context of the World Wide Web, rendering is the operation performed by the user's browser of converting the Web document (in HTML, XML, etc. plus image and other included files) into the visible page on the user's screen. ; Repoint or re-point : To change the destination article of a redirect, either to avoid a double redirect or to change the redirect so that it leads to a more appropriate article. The term retarget is also frequently used. ; Rescope or re-scope : To change the subject matter of an article, a template or – most frequently – a category to one that is more acceptable for editorial or encyclopedic purposes. If by doing so the subject area is broadened, the term upscope is sometimes used. ; Revert : An edit that reverses changes made by someone else. Abbreviated as RV. See . ; RM : Remove. Used in edit summaries to indicate that a particular piece of text or formatting has been deleted. ; RMV : Shorthand for "Removed vandalism" (rmv). Used in edit summaries when good edits were made after vandalism, requiring the editor to sort out the vandalism, as opposed to a simple reversion. ; RS : Wikipedia:Reliable sources – a guideline that articles should be based on reliable published sources. Not to be confused with 'Rescope.'' ; Rollback : To revert a page to a previous version. Admins have special tools to do this more easily. ; Real world or Realworld : Real world (RW POV) articles are written with the point of view of an individual outside the fictional universe (e.g., you). Most articles concerning background and production information are written from this . See 'In-universe for the opposing viewpoint.'' S ; Sandbox : The test page where users are encouraged to try out their wiki skills. See A Fifth Dimension:Sandbox. ; Section editing : Using the "edit" links to the right of the page, one can get an edit window containing only part of the page, making it easier to find the exact spot where one wants to edit. is needed for section editing. You can turn section editing off in your under the "Enable section editing via edit links" option—and in articles by using "__NOSECTIONEDIT__". ; Self link : A wikilink contained in an article that points the reader to that same article, for example, linking phaser in the article "phaser". Such links are automatically displayed as strongly emphasized text rather than links, but the more complex case of a link which redirects to the same article is not, and should be de-wikified. Also known as a self reference. ; Self reference : 1. A reference made to the fact that the wiki is in fact a wiki, particularly when used within "in-universe" articles (e.g., "Bob and Millie Frazier awoke in a small town (see A Fifth Dimension's page about the episode by ."). Does not apply to policy, guideline, template, forum, help or talk pages. See A Fifth Dimension:Avoid self referencing. :2. Similar to above, but in a form of a typical weblink (e.g., "To read about the episode, click here!"). :3. Linking back to the current page in the current page. Applies to any and all pages. Same as: 'Self-link.'' ; Sharpen cat or sh cat : To place an article within a more specific category. ; Shortcut : A redirect used within '''wikispace to enable editors to get to a project page more quickly. See also 'Wikipedia:Shortcut' ; Sidebar : A part of a page that is used to conveniently provide pertinent and useful information, sometimes used to help categorize certain pages like episode articles. Displayed in a table/box format, often using 'infoboxes. An example of a sidebar can be found (in most cases) to the left of this page, assisting in navigating through the wiki. ; Smerge : A contraction of "slight merge" or "selective merge", sometimes used in Candidates for deletion discussions. This is for when a topic deserves mention in another article, but not to the extent and detail that is already included (a partial merge and redirect). ; Sock puppet : A user account created by an existing user, typically used to "bump up" vote counts or attack other users. See also: 'Meat puppet.'' ; sp : Short for spelling correction or space. Used in edit summaries. Not to be confused with 'subpage. ; Split : Separating a single page into two or more pages. ; Stub : An article that is shorter than one paragraph, typical of new articles. See A Fifth Dimension: Find or fix a stub. ; Subarticle or sub-article : 1. An article that has been split from an original, larger main article to keep the main article readable and to better develop the sub-topic of the split into a richer article in its own right. Contrast with 'subpage. :2. A page in multi-page list that was split to reduce list article size. ; Subst : Short for "substituting" a template. ; Substub or sub-stub : An article that is a very short stub. These generally fail to cover the necessary information on a subject. ; Subpage or sub-page : A page associated with an article, usually as a subdivision of the subject in question. Subpages are generally frowned upon, unless as part of a copyvio procedure, selected templates or user page use. ; Sysop : See Admin. T ; Tag : (see Flag) ; Talk page : A page set aside for the discussion of an article or page. See . ; Template : A way of automatically including the contents of one page within another page, used for boilerplate text, navigational aids, and numerous other uses that save time and server wear. See . ; Top : On a user's list of contributions, (top) indicates that the article has not been edited by anyone else since the user last edited it. ; Transclusion : See Wikipedia:Transclusion, Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits. ; Transwiki : Move a page to another Wikimedia project, in particular Wiktionary:Main Page, Wikibooks:Main Page or Wikisource:Main Page. See also m:Transwiki. ; Troll : A user who incites or engages in disruptive behavior (trolling). See also Internet troll and What is a troll? at Meta. ; Typo : Misspelling, spacing error, or other typing related mistake made in creating or editing a page. U ; Userfy : Wikipedia:Userfication is the process by which material posted in an article, project, or template space is moved into the user space: into a user page or subpage. A common case is where an inexperienced user who is not a notable person has created an article about himself/herself. The article would be deleted after userfying – moving its content to a user page. Another common instance is project pages that have been allowed to go dormant. ; User page : A personal page for apprentice narrators and other editors in A Fifth Dimension. Most people use their to introduce themselves and to keep various personal notes and lists related to the project. They are also used to communicate with other users via the user talk pages. See A Fifth Dimension:User page policy. V ; Vandalism : The act of defacing or deleting content from a page. This can be by deleting text or writing nonsense, bad language, etc. The term is sometimes improperly used to discredit the views of an opponent in an edit war. Vandalism should be reverted or removed and if necessary, report to an administrator. W ; Watchlist : A set of pages selected by the user, who can then click on to see recent changes to those pages. See . ; Weasel words : Phrases such as "Some say that..." or "It has been argued..." that introduce a point of view without attributing it more specifically. See Wikipedia:Weasel words; see also Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Attributing and substantiating biased statements. ; Wikia : The company that owns Wikia and provides hosting services for A Fifth Dimension. See About Wikia. ; Wikify/wikification : The process of adding wiki markup to a page. See . ; WikiGnome, wikignome, or Wiki-Gnome : A user who makes minor, helpful edits without clamoring for attention or praise for what they did. See also Wikipedia:WikiGnome. ; Wikilink : A link to another page on the same wiki, as opposed to an external link. ; Wikimedia : Properly Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., the non-profit organization that runs and other projects. Wikimedia is not officially affiliated with Wikia. The name is often confused with MediaWiki. See also Wikimedia. ; Wikipedia : A project run by Wikimedia to create a free content encyclopedia using wiki software. ; Wiktionary : A Wikipedia project to create a free online dictionary of every language. See also: Wiktionary. See also * * * *